Draw Steel League Play Rules

[ivory delta]

I am switching my store from the Seattle game to Draw Steel. As of right now, there are no rules for running league play and the dev team has been focusing more on making content than filling this need, how dare! 😜
I will be cataloging the rules that I am writing for my local league here, and I am more than happy to receive any feedback on them.

Currently, the base concept is to separate Victories from individual characters.

• Each session that a player is present, their character will earn XP = victories gained
• XP cannot be cached for a level until the group takes a respite.
• Victories are tracked by the Director, and each hero treats the group Victories as their own for mechanics.

There are some issues, namely, the fact that inevitably, some Heroes will end up lower level than the adventure expects. I will need to figure out how to account for a lower level hero when balancing encounters.

[analog vortex]

Idk if theres a clean way to do that short of everyone leveling down. A bar in my old city used to do sort of a Westmarch style of game most weeks.

iirc the heroes level down to the level of the adventure and got to keep items of a certain rarity based on the level of the adventure. "XP" gained from completing adventures (with DMs getting 3x the XP value) are tracked by player NOT by character. So if I had 30 XP for example (with Draw Steel) I'd be able to participate in level 1 and 2 adventures.

tldr; for lower level adventures have folks level down, for higher level adventures give lower level folks a pre-gen and let that XP carry over.

Yes, there were plentiful excel sheets involved lol. I only came for oneshot nights so I can't vouch for how smooth that system felt in practice since I never participated in the official westmarch games.

[plush vigil]

I'm currently running Draw Steel in a kind of west marches style game and had to deal with the same problems. My approach was to level up everyone together (even players that didn't participate on most adventures) and the participation instead translate into more time for individuals to pursue downtime projects.

As with every solution, mine isn't perfect. I look foward to see how your rules deal with the challenges of league play and give feedback if I'm able to use them.

[soft schooner]

How are you thinking about treating Downtime in league play?

[ivory delta]

Currently in the Seattle game, we are giving out "downtime points" which can be spent on magic items and campaign specific things that we were designing.

The working idea is one project roll per session +one each respite.
This would make some perks less useful, so I'll likely be rewriting those.

Sorry, by "my store" I did mean my FLGS
While I am friends with the owner, I do not own it myself.
I do however, run the organized play events at that store.

[ivory delta]

For the first season, I will be disallowing complications. I love them, but there are a few that have high trolling potential, and I need to identify them all to have targeted exclusion.

[soft schooner]

Complications aren't balanced the same as other character options, good call

[ivory delta]

We will also be limiting the "allowed" player options to only what is published in physical books. This is partially to drive Physical book sales at the FLGS, and partly to avoid folks who may join the Patreon from showing up with playtest options that the Directors have not had time to anticipate in encounters.

[warped root]

I'm interested in playing and directing.

[ivory delta]

I think you may be misunderstanding. I am logging the League Play rules I am making for my FLGS.
I will eventually make a formatted google doc with rules, allowed sources, etc. and posting it in this thread for folks to use at their own League Play events. It is, I imagine, a rather niche project, but I hope it will help at least one other person.

Out of Scope: Running a digital League with these rules. But if you want to start one and give feedback, I would be excited.

[stable smelt]

Knights of the Last Cal has the community level up together. That sounds weird but plays really well. GM just plans adventure of correct level for that week, players level up/down to the current week.

[ivory delta]

So a big part of league play is having a stable of smaller adventures to run at various tiers for variety.
But as DS only has a few, I am thinking of sourcing a few community made ones and making running guides to go along with league rules.
Any suggestions on zines or good smaller projects would be appreciated.

I'm considering the solution to a party getting loot nobody wants.
Simple solution: Items can be broken down into half their project point cost and given to the party to use as they see fit.

I'm not sure if this breaks anything with the game balance.

[soft schooner]

What parameters of "smaller adventures" are you thinking? Victory count, duration, Combat/Montage ratio?

[ivory delta]

I'm thinking delves personally